As reality television stars, Joe and Teresa Giudice have certainly profited off their notoriety. But now that they're both headed to prison for fraudulently obtaining millions in loans and for hiding income and assets in their 2009 bankruptcy filing, could their profits from the "Housewives" franchise or from future books be subject to so-called "Son of Sam" laws?

These laws, designed to stop convicts from profiting off their misdeeds, have largely been applied to violent criminals in the past, but there's nothing on the face of the New Jersey law
that would exempt white collars criminals such as the Giudices, according to Stuart Green, a law professor at Rutgers School of Law in Newark, who specializes in white collar crime.

This could mean that the victims of their crimes could seek to seize their profits.

The first "Son of Sam" law was passed in 1977 in New York to prevent killer David Berkowitz from selling the media rights to his story, but over the years, courts have whittled away at such laws because of concerns they were too broad and violated the First Amendment.

In 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional after Simon & Schuster appealed a court decision to suspend payment to Henry Hill, the mobster whose life story became the cinema classic "Goodfellas," and to redirect the money to an escrow fund for crime victims.

In that decision, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor suggested that the law could be made to apply to say, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" or even "The Confessions of St. Augustine" because it describes crimes they committed.

The current incarnation of the New Jersey "Son of Sam" law, enacted in 2003, targets income generated "as a result of having committed the crime, including any assets obtained through the use of unique knowledge obtained during the commission of, or in preparation for the commission of a crime."

So, in the Giudice case, the couple would have to specifically spill the details about how they committed the fraud, in, say, a memoir or television special, in order for their profits to be seized under the law. If they were to speak or write more generally about the disruption to their family life, or their experiences in prison, Green says, the the "Son of Sam" law wouldn't apply.

(Readers would probably be much more interested in "Real Housewives of Cellblock C," say, than a book about the much driers in-and-outs of how the couple faked their W-2s, anyway.)

And as far as continuing to star in and draw a salary from "Real Housewives" — although Teresa's 15-month jail sentence likely precludes her from appearing next season — Green said they could argue they're not benefitting directly from the crime: "They're just celebrities," he says.

It's also worth noting that Teresa, who joined the cast before her raft of criminal exploits surfaced, has never willingly talked about her legal woes on camera.

One other reason the Giudices likely won't have to contend with "Son of Sam" laws: These laws, which aren't invoked very often, are intended to compensate victims of crime. So while the Giudice fraud certainly had its victims — Wells Fargo, for example, is waiting for the couple to repay $414,588.90 from one of their fraudulent loans — they're not individuals.

Green says the language of the law is broad enough that if the bank wanted to go after the couple under the law, they could — though there don't seem to be many precedents of a corporation invoking the law.